Questions for Sue Butler

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As the editor and publisher of the Macquarie Dictionary, Sue Butler
has the unenviable task of deciding if "Muggle" and "coalition of
the willing" will join the 122,000 entries. Interview by Danielle
Teutsch.

How many years have you been working on the Macquarie
Dictionary?

I was brought in to work on the dictionary in 1970. I fell into
it by sheer accident. I had done a BA in Latin, Greek and
linguistics at Sydney University, then did a bachelor of music but
ran out of money before I could finish. I saw an ad in the paper
about a new dictionary and applied for a job. I've been working on
the dictionary ever since.

Did the dictionary cause a stir when it came out?

We had great anxiety about it - we had nightmares that we had
forgotten something important like "fair dinkum". I remember the
publisher downing a whisky saying "this dictionary had better be as
bloody good as you think". But it was an instant success. It was
the first genuine Australian dictionary, part of the wave of
Australian publishing in the 1970s, and the interest in Australian
humour and culture. Up until that time, people thought Australian
English was only vulgar or strine. From the start, the dictionary
included words that were pivotal for our culture. The entry for
"bush" goes on for pages in the Macquarie, including terms
like "bush breakfast" and "bush telegraph", unlike any other
dictionary.

How many words are in the current edition?

There are 121, 837 separate entries.

Can you really say you know all the meanings?

No, but I do have a good sense of what is in and what is out. I
write the first draft of all the new material.

I bet you're a whiz at crossword puzzles.

I'm quite good at the quick ones, but not very good at the
cryptic. I'm not terribly good at Scrabble - adding up all the
points defeats me.

How do you decide which new words to include in the
dictionary, and which ones to drop?

The only test is whether it has general currency or not. To do
that we have an in-house database of Australian texts to search,
and of course there is the wonderful invention of Google. I'll also
sit and read everything and anything from magazines in the doctor's
surgery to junk mail. You never know when new words are going to
turn up.

Is there much debate about them?

Yes. We're having discussions at the moment about terms related
to the war on terrorism such as "coalition of the willing" and
"axis of evil". Are they common usage terms or propaganda terms
from Bush and his Government? It's a constant problem. Then there
was a debate over including words from Harry Potter, but
we've decided to steer clear of that. "Muggle" might be a good word
but it's not a dictionary term.

I like Don, and his critique of American management terms. We
all hate "mission statement" and "closure". But I don't like the
fact that he attacks all words that are used in specialist fields
like marketing and economics. I don't object to everything that's
new or everything that's outside my preferred areas of interest.
For instance, words like "greenwashing", that is, making your
company appear more environmental than it is, are quite clever and
fun.

Are there any words that shouldn't be in the
dictionary?

There is a word "alameda", meaning a public walkway, that
originated from Spain. Nobody uses this word in Australia so
there's no reason why it should be there. But one of the original
editors pleaded for it to go in because it was such a "lovely
word". One day we will have to get more hard-hearted and remove
it.

You've been collecting Australian regional words and
expressions for the Australian Word Map project. What have you
unearthed?

The best thing we've discovered is that regionalisms still
exist. When we started on this project we really wondered whether
there was still enough distance between the cities for them to
develop. In Tasmania they say that someone has "a head like a
busted sofa". In Melbourne they will say "a face like a bastard
pig". In NSW, it's "a head like a dropped meat pie" and in Brisbane
it's "a head like a half-sucked mango". It's amazing how it works -
it's like a joke that goes around the country and everyone adapts
it. Another example is the "Dapto briefcase", a Wollongong
expression for a cask of wine. In northern NSW they call it a
"Coraki handbag".

What are some of your favourite Australiana
expressions?

It's hard to go past "bush chook" (emu) and "dunny budgie"
(blowfly).

Is language really on the decline? Are we getting lazier and
sloppier?

No, that's not true at all. We are all immensely better at
language than we used to be. There's a lot more language around,
and many more people communicate by writing. "Lazy" is used to
describe usages and pronunciations that people don't happen to
like.

And, like, the dreaded "like"?

Of course there's an element of fashion in our lexicon, words
that are simply there to make a statement. But if we stripped the
style out of language it would be a boring world indeed. Words like
"excellent", "sick", "unreal" and "deadly" (to express approval)
are all fashion statements. I personally wouldn't use the word
"deadly" but then I also wouldn't wear a short fluffy dress and I
certainly wouldn't object to anyone else wearing one if they could
get away with it.